bobafred

I spent the weekend in Chicago visiting my recently-moved-out-of-Atlanta friend Adam. Along for the journey were fellow Atlantans Robert and Sean.

I’ve never been to Chicago before, and Adam definitely showed it to me proper. Friday night was a hang-out at the pub night in his neighborhood. I was amazed by that fact that none of the bars were overly crowded like those here in the ATL. A nice surprise.

Saturday day was spent touring the city both on foot and bike. The bike ride by the lake to Navy Pier and Millennium Park was excellent. I was really wiped when we were done, but the day was still young as Adam was hosting a party back at his place starting at 7:00. After the party, we went with some dork who was “going to show the dirty birds how to party in Chicago” to a very Buckhead-like neighborhood. My feelings are, if it ain’t Fado, I don’t want to goto Buckhead. The same could be said for this neighborhood. It was crowded and really not that great. Also, I did not learn any new partying skills. I might not have been paying close enough attention, though. I’ve never done so much in one day.

Sunday was spent at a local sports bar watching some NFL. Glad to report that my Giants got a victory. Another great thing here was that we were late for the early game kickoffs, but there were still plenty of places to sit in the bar. Even though the hometown Bears were on. If I tried to do that at Jocks and Jills, I would be standing or sitting on the floor. Once again, a nice surprise. After that we scrambled back to Adam’s and almost missed our flight back home due to some traffic (something that felt more like Atlanta).

I had an excellent time and am definitely going to be visiting again. Chicago is an extremely fun and totally different city from Atlanta. My thanks to Adam.

Oh and the reason that Chicago is spelled ‘Chicargo’ in the title is because there is this lady that I work with that pronounces it that way and I think it is very funny.

So obviously today I bought the Star Wars Trilogy DVD set. Tonight should be a good night for the DD 5.1 EX setup.

With that being said, beware that some sources have reported audio problems with A New Hope. I guess I’ll find out tonight.

In other DVD news, look for this year’s funniest movie, Napoleon Dynamite on 12/21. Sweet.

Last night I attended a screening of Donnie Darko: The Director’s Cut at the Lefont Plaza in the Highlands with friend/other-weird-person-at-work-besides-me Louis. Now, as anyone that will listen to me will tell you, I consider this to be one of the greatest films of the last 5 years or so. I originally posted about it here and then again here.
[Possible spoilers to follow]

Before I get started, I should say that as a whole, I thought it was excellent. Aside from some additional scenes, (some of which are viewable as deleted scenes on the current DVD) the movie and its pacing were essentially the same. There were some minor touch-ups to the digital effects and changes to some of the music to make the production feel a bit larger budget, which was all welcomed.

As for the additional scenes, overall, I like them. There is more character development for the Darko family, which is nice. And you get to learn a little more about Donnie’s medical treatment. Plus, more Patrick Swayze, and who doesn’t want that?

There are also some additions that are probably meant to help the first-time viewer along the way to understand what is going on with the movie, and I think these hurt the film a bit. The best thing about the original cut (as far as my first viewing was concerned) is that at the end you really have no idea what you just witnessed and you immediately want to watch it again to figure it out. I think some of that may be lost with the Director’s Cut. With that said, I did enjoy the extra info, because even after seeing the movie as many times as I have, it made me think about what I thought this whole thing is really about. Louis offered up a possible theory to the film that I had never thought of or heard before in all of the reading I have done about Darko. Thanks to Louis and his intimidating Iowa test scores.

Another thing that bothered me a bit was the re-recording/re-mixing of Frank’s voice (the bunny version of Frank). It sounded more human, which I suppose is fine since he is human, but the first time I heard him speaking to Donnie in the original cut, it was really freaky. Here, the freakiness is lessened.

With all my bitching out of the way, I should finish up here by saying that I loved this cut of the movie and I will be one of the first in line to buy this when it comes out on DVD. I’m hearing not until 2005 for Region 1 and October 4th for Region 2. Darn those lucky people in Region 2.

In summation, Richard Kelly is one of the finest story tellers of these modern times. Please be sure to check out the unofficial home of all things Richard Kelly at Richard-Kelly.net and there is always his IMDb page for his current projects.

Showtimes for DD:TDC can be found at the Newmarket Films page on the Playdates link.

The whole server move and redesign is taking longer than originally anticipated. Basically, I haven’t really wanted to do anything on the computer after the work. Stupid the work. Just thought I would update. Bleh.

Bill Hunt over at The Digital Bits has posted his in-depth review of The Star Wars Trilogy DVD set (street date 09/21). Make sure to check out the page with screenshots of the changes to the movies, if you don’t mind spoilers.

Lots of good, too much of bad (imo), but overall a welcome addition to my collection. I can’t wait to make this dvd Tuesday trip to the video store during lunch!

I will be moving bobafred.com to a new PHP server probably starting tomorrow. What will happen first is that I get everything up and running in static HTML and then do a quick redesign and write the site in PHP. The photo section will be down until I get it rewritten with PHP. Oh yeah, I have to learn PHP too.

At the very least, the site will be down for a few days. At the very most, it’ll be down longer. Everything is really dependent on whether or not I want to look at the computer after work.